Inside the apartment, Ken reread the short letter signed by someone who said he was a neighbour. The letter said the police were watching the front and garage entrances of the building. Ken fought the temptation to start looking around the apartment for video or listening devices and instead sat back on the couch and forced a smile. He set the letter on the table beside the envelope and returned to his Italian meal, where he appeared relaxed as he opened a bottle of red wine and poured himself a glass. The lasagna had lost its appeal as he focused on the letter. The red wine in the glass tempted him and he took a sip, a stream of wine staining his white shirt red.
“Shit.” Ken got up and dabbed the linen napkin on the stains while slowly walking into the kitchen, the spring-loaded door swinging closed behind him.
The detectives concern about the letter turned into amusement as they watched Ken spill wine on himself.
“Could be a preapproval for a credit card or something,” suggested Baker “Wouldn’t they send them by courier?”
“Best have a look at the letter while he’s out of the room,” added Thorpe.
The computer technician took a still photo of the letter resting on the table and moved it to another monitor, returning the other monitor to the live feed from the living room. The photo of the letter was blurry.
“Let me just filter this and we should be able to give it a read,” said the detective running the computer equipment.
The high-speed computer quickly cleared the image and the detectives read the short passage. All three detectives raced to the exit.
“Make sure the exits are totally covered,” shouted a running Collins to another policeman. The policeman called the Sargent in charge of the policemen outside and learned that nobody had gone through either the front door or the garage. The radio message was relayed to Baker on his walkie-talkie and he passed the news to Collins and Thorpe as the kicked in the door to the apartment.
Ken felt his way along the brick walls as he proceeded sideways down the narrow set of stairs. He swore under his breath because the lights were not working. Still, he knew it was four flights before he arrived at the exit and he needed to move quickly despite the steep angle of the ancient stairs. Adrenaline flowed and his pace quickened as he reached the second to last flight of stairs close to the exit and freedom. Half way down the final flight his foot landed on something other than a stone step, the small round object squashing under his foot, causing his feet to fly out from under him. His head smashed into one of the steps and several ribs snapped on another stone step. Ken screamed in agony as he slid down the final four steps, coming to rest on the small landing, warm, sticky fluid streaming down his back. Even with a massive headache, dizziness, and the pain from the broken ribs, Ken saw the sliver of light from outside the old door. What he didn’t understand was how the door had come to be open. He grabbed the back of his head to try and stop the pain and the flow of blood when a man moved in front of the slice of light. The light silhouetted the tall figure of the man holding a briefcase.
“Help me,” gasped Ken.
The man never moved.
“Please, can you help me?”
The man switched the briefcase from his left hand to his right and lifted the case in what Ken thought was slow motion.
“No help for you, but I can give you some advice,” whispered the man. “If you want to throw someone into the sea, never do it in the shipping lanes.”
The briefcase crashed down on Ken’s head, splitting his skull in two. The case flew open and six red bricks landed in the streaming blood. Eric dropped the battered case and walked out the door, leaving the piece of wire he used to pick the lock laying on top of the pile of leaves. Once he strolled down the dark lane and turned onto Bayswater several police cars drive past, but he continued walking, blending into the sidewalk full of shoppers. He stopped in front of a bright window display and inspected himself, pleased to find that he was free of any blood splatter. Two blocks further and he turned and entered his hotel where he went up to his room. He confirmed his makeup was still in perfect order. After a quick change of clothes he reached into his suitcase and checked over his final British purchase, a quality fake passport with his temporary look. He snapped shut the suitcase and departed the hotel, walking down the steps to a tube station where he boarded a train for Waterloo Station.
In Ken’s London apartment the detectives searched every room with their guns drawn, but there was no sign of the man. After they checked the apartment a second time they gathered in the living room.
“All right, let’s think this through,” said Thorpe, “Could he have slipped away while we ran down here?”
“I’m sure they would have called us if he had, but I’ll call upstairs and check.” Baker pulled out his walkie-talkie and checked with the policeman manning the monitors. “No, a man has been at the monitor the whole time and Ken never returned from the kitchen.”
All eyes turned to the kitchen door. The detectives again pulled out their guns and cautiously entered the gourmet kitchen, once again methodically going through the kitchen, checking every cabinet large enough for Ken to have slipped into. Still there was no sign of the fugitive.
Thorpe studied the window over the sink. It had been painted over at least a dozen times and could not be opened. As well, the fall was straight down four stories.
Collins gravitated towards the pantry, which was lined with shelves on both sides. Few groceries were on the shelves, most of the canned food was still in boxes near the far wall. Jim noticed something odd about the way the boxes sat in a pile at a forty-five degree angle from the wall, as if they had been pushed there. Faint scraping marks scratched in the tile formed an arc that ran from the right side of the rich wooden end wall to the end of the pile of groceries.
Collins went back into the kitchen, his finger to his lips to coax silence and whispered. “I think I found a hidden room or passage.”
Baker and Thorpe followed Collins into the pantry where Thorpe shone his flashlight on the shadowed rear wall as Collins ran his finger up and down the edge of the right hand side of the narrow wall at the end of the pantry. He applied uniform pressure as he moved his hand up and down the paneling but found nothing. When he repeated the process on the top of the end panel he found a small button. He pointed to his partners in a downward motion, mouthing the word “button.”
The detectives, weapons at the ready, watched Thorpe press the button. The door made a small clicking sound and the right side of the panel moved away from the wall. Thorpe grabbed the narrow door and quickly pulled it open.
Behind the wall the detectives found the top of a hidden stairwell. It was narrow and dark. Baker pulled out his flashlight and aimed it down the stairs. They saw nothing but old spider webs and inches of dust. They moved down each flight of stairs the concern that Ken Clelland had once again slipped through their fingers built with each passing minute.
As they moved around the final bend the beam of Bakers’ flashlight illuminated a dead body with a badly crushed skull. The passage was so narrow it was easy for the detectives to see was nobody else in the passage, so they holstered their guns and Baker called the paramedics. They remained several steps above the crime scene, but were certain it was Ken Clelland, and he was very dead. Collins skirted around the body and, using a pen, pushed open the short door that led into the narrow alley. He drew his gun and went outside, but there was nobody in sight.
“Tell the paramedics they can get better access to the body from out here,” said Thorpe.
Baker contacted the paramedics and advised them. Collins stood at the top of the final flight of stairs and studied the blood soaked scene before him, noticing blood on a step just below him, and four or five squashed tomatoes several steps further down. He also spotted the lighter red of the tomatoes on Clelland’s right shoe. On the floor next to Ken’s body was a smashed briefcase still containing two bricks, clearly the murder weapon.
The paramedics confirmed the victim
was deceased. The coroner confirmed death was due to two sharp blows to the head. The detectives gathered at Scotland Yard and pieced together the evidence. Eric Clelland’s fingerprints were all over the briefcase, the door, and the bricks. He never tried to hide the fact he killed his brother. In fact he left perfect full-hand prints squarely in the middle of each side of the expensive case, not blurred, but crisp and clear, as if he was putting his signature on the killing. Eric’s prints were also clearly displayed on the envelope and letter delivered by the courier.
Collins studied the clear prints on the envelope carefully protected in a plastic pouch. “Eric clearly set up his brother and nailed him where he least expected it, in the secret escape route through the unused staircase in the adjoining building.”
“The caretaker said after the apartment sold he had complaints about unauthorized construction in that part of the building, but could never pin it down,” said Thorpe
Thorpe and Collins closed the file on Ken Clelland immediately, but spent two more months searching London for a hint of his brother. They found nothing and thanked Baker and the other London police officers for their assistance before returning to Canada.
Collins reported to his superiors in Toronto that the Houston case was solved.
In Edmonton the public expected more since their city was the scene of many more killings and injuries. With Thorpe leading the full time team of four detectives, a steady stream of leads came in for about a month. Some from as far away as Hong Kong, while others were from people in downtown Edmonton who swore they saw a suspicious tall man hanging around in front of their house. All of the leads went nowhere and as the months went by, the size of the task force searching for Eric Clelland shrank until Thorpe sat alone in a small office at the end of the hall. Not only was the size of the task force reduced, but his budget also shrank as rumours circulated the case was cold and would be shelved.
* * *
The sand in the south of Spain was not the fine powder of St. Kitts and the weather not quite as warm as the Caribbean. Still, in an attractive condominium, a tall man sat on his balcony looking at the setting sun bounce off the blue Mediterranean water. His attractive girlfriend brought him a cold beer to take the edge off the humid night.
“Gracias, Margarita.”
“De nada, Miguel.”
Eric grew up under the guidance of his mother and father. As he became a man his brother stepped in and told him what to do. Now his hands didn’t shake to the point he needed drugs to calm him. The past three months made him into a new person. Eric was gone, and Miguel Hernandez had found Margarita, a warm, kind hearted person with whom he shared his life. The turning point and the end of Eric Clelland, came with his violent farewell to his brother, Ken.
Miguel sat back and smiled. A small ant crawled along the right arm of the chair, stopping for a moment to study the frosty bottle of amber liquid. Miguel reached down to the delicate creature and laid his hand, palm up in front of the ant. The tiny creature climbed briskly up the side of the hand and stopped in the middle of the palm. Miguel brought his hand close to his face and smiled. Getting up from his comfortable chair he walked over to the railing separating his patio from the warm sand and carefully set the ant among several other ants scurrying around a potted plant.
The End
Other books by Randall Sawka from Books We Love
Rangeland Ruckus
Raining Trpib;e
Randall Sawka and his wife Nancy lives in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. They love to read, walk along the ocean, and travel the world.
Rough Business Page 22